Hi, I I noticed in a post someone used cotton gloves when drawing, I bought some, but found the smear graphite about worse than the hand does.. I find using a piece of paper annoying as I always loose it, or forget it.. what other suggestions do you have ? cheers rob

Hi Rob I used to fold in half a piece of A4 paper and place it over the part of drawing that I'm not working on...It's protecting the side below my hand and it stays still so it's not causing any troubles to my drawing...Advantage of my method is that the hand is moving freely around and the graphite is not affected.I haven't tried the gloves yet but after reading your post I probably won't do it ;o)I did try to stick a piece of paper to my hand with some glue tape like JD Hillberry advises but it's not for me...It's actually disturbing me because I'm not only drawing but moving my hand to sharpen the pencils or drinking some caffee or stroking my dog ;o)So having some paper attached to my hand making me uncomfortable rather than useful ;o)I hope it'll help you to choose what's going to work for you.All the best.

-- To work with my hand on a handguard - a piece of card. Not just any card but a 6" wide strip of the paper I'm working on (usually Mellotex). That card is angled across the drawing and solidly clipped to my drawing board at its base with two board clips. That prevents it from moving or rotating but I can peel it up and back to see underneath if I need too.

Being the same as my drawing paper has a number of advantages:

-- I can use it to experiment on. If it works on the guard then I can transfer it exactly to my drawing.

-- I can move my hand around freely knowing the guard will not move.

-- and it causes no distraction at all - it's just an extension of my drawing paper.